Ruchi Sharma - Innovation in Stem Cells Artwork

The Big Experiment

Ever wondered how technology start-ups, well, start-up? For most founder entrepreneurs, it is the biggest experiment they'll ever run. Like most experiments, the result isn't known beforehand and it often doesn't work first time. On a bigger scale, how do big tech companies turn innovative science into profit?

Mark Davison interviews founder scientists, executives, investors, communicators, and others in the technology start-up and corporate science ecosystems.

Learn how great ideas turned into thriving businesses (or not) from those who made it happen (or didn't). Get business tips, lessons learned, and life lessons straight from the people who know.

Inspiring, disastrous, funny: hear what life in a science-driven company is really like.

Straight-talking, no nonsense, but conversational style. All technical content is explained for the non-specialist - you don't need a PhD or fluency in jargon and technobabble.

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The Big Experiment

Ruchi Sharma - Innovation in Stem Cells

May 28, 2024 • Mark Davison • Episode 7

Would you have the guts to pitch directly to the customer to sell your idea?

You need to be prepared to hear no a lot, and learn from the experience to adapt for the next time, to get the yes you need.

This was the reality faced by my guest in this episode, Ruchi Sharma, CEO & Founder of Stemnovate Limited. She used that customer-first approach and eventually got the funding needed to start her company that focuses on stem cell research.

Ruchi’s work at Stemonovate creates a unique platform for targeted drug development. Through this work she has been able to reduce animal testing and improve experimental outcomes. Her latest focus is on developing treatments that can support children with the most challenging of medical conditions.

Ruchi shares her reasons for leaving academia to focus on entrepreneurship and the challenges she faced to get there. She also talks about her upbringing in India and what started her passion for science.“I started pitching to pharmaceutical companies on my own” – Ruchi Sharma

You’ll hear about:

01:01 - An introduction to Stemnovate

02:25 - Ruchi's life in India

05:24 - Why are stem cells important in medicine?

11:20 - Ruchi's experience at Cambridge

12:45 - Why and how Ruchi was called by entrepreneurship

20:08 - Why Ruchi had to bootstrap her work

29:23 - The evolution of our genome

30:48 - Picking commercial winners

37:28 - Ethics and the challenges of stem cells

40:03 - What's next for Stemnovate?

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